The method contrasts sharply with most prison
self-help programs (Alcoholics Anonymous, say, or cognitive behavioral therapy
workshops), which tend to emphasize rules, goals, steps, and stages. In
Council, the basic format is strikingly simple: Participants sit in a circle,
pass a “talking piece” (a ritual object denoting the bearer’s right to
undivided attention), and take turns speaking and listening “from the heart.”
The topic can be anything the group chooses, and any member can lead the discussion.
That open-endedness reflects the technique’s folk origins: Although the version
to be practiced today at SVSP grew out of the human-potential movement of the
1970s, Council is based on the kind of talking circle used by Native American
and other aboriginal cultures—in Hawaii, it’s called “ho‘oponopono”; in
Zimbabwe, it’s “daré”—as an egalitarian way of resolving disputes and making
communal decisions.

An aura of earnest spirituality suffuses the
practice, but there’s no religious content. Nor is there a specific therapeutic
agenda. “Council doesn’t start with the assumption that something’s wrong with
you,” says retired warden David Winett, a longtime supporter. In corrections,
he observes, the custom is to tell inmates, “What you need is a good talking-to.”
Council’s core belief, Winett says, is that what everyone needs is “a good
listening-to.” By hearing others deeply, the theory goes, people learn
compassion; by being heard, they learn to better understand themselves.

(…)

Advocates of Council argue that the practice
could transform U.S. prisons, curbing violence while helping inmates open up
emotionally in ways that are all too rare behind bars. That, in turn, would
allow them to make better use of other rehabilitation programs as well, from
substance abuse treatment to remedial education. For such programs to be
effective, notes SVSP’s warden, Randolf Grounds, “you’ve got to have inmate
buy-in. Until you get that, you’re not gonna have significant change.” By
encouraging prisoners to shed their psychic armor and overcome their
us-versus-them mentality, Grounds asserts, Council’s influence can spread “like
an antibiotic” through every level of prison culture. The larger effect,
boosters say, could be a reduction in recidivism.

With their wary faces, weight lifter’s muscles,
and masses of tattoos, the men in the circle don’t appear to be the ideal
candidates for a practice based on letting down one’s defenses. Although
they’re curious about Council—one of the trainers, Jared Seide, has given brief
presentations for each of the yard’s main ethnic blocs—their presence doesn’t
mean they’re buying it. In prison, the motivations for attending “program” (as
rehabilitation offerings are generically known) can include a desire to impress
parole boards or simply escape boredom.

As they wait for the session to start, the
blacks and Indians fall into separate conversations, seasoned with a mix of
anger and helplessness, while the transsexual and the Honduran sit silent and
apart. One man gripes about the treatment of visiting family members: “They
make the women pull up their shirts in the visiting room to check for weapons.”
Another disparages the officers at his previous prison: “They’re all corn-fed
crackers. They love to spit on you and knock you down.” A third rails against a
scheduled wave of transfers, which will send some inmates to facilities farther
from their loved ones: “If they try to move me, I’ll take drastic measures. I’m
not gonna say what, but there are ways.”

Seide calls the meeting to order. “Thank you
for showing up for this,” says the kind-faced 50-year-old, whose skull is shorn
like a monk’s. The group, he explains, will be “diving into the question of
‘Who am I? Who is my brother?’ ” We’ll be exploring “that territory of brothers
and others.” The inmates keep their arms crossed, their expressions neutral.
But they lean forward perceptibly when the taller trainer speaks.

(…)

“I want to move us into doing this,” Seide
says. “Let’s begin.”

He and Mobley have laid a white embroidered mat
at the center of the circle, covered with vaguely numinous items: a brass
Tibetan bowl, a Buddhist temple bell, LED candles, seashells, a sage bundle, a
Hopi doll, carved stones. Seide invites each participant to choose an object
that he finds meaningful and say a few words of dedication to open the session.

An inmate who calls himself Jaguar—Mojave on
his father’s side, Mexican American on his mother’s, but Native in the
polarized context of prison—takes the talking piece, which today is an ordinary
Hacky Sack. He’s 32, serving a 14-year term for assault with a deadly weapon,
and covered in tattoos from the top of his shaved head to his knuckles. Jaguar
picks up the Tibetan bowl. “To me,” he says, “this represents when we’re in the
womb, and the circle of life is before us, and we have to decide what we’re
going to be.”

One of the black inmates dedicates a stone
heart to the family members he’s lost while imprisoned. “My heart is exactly
like this,” he says. The Honduran rings the temple bell in honor of “all the
voices that have been silent.”

I’m taken aback by the speed with which these
hardened convicts slip into poetic self-revelation. During a break, however,
Seide tells me that Council’s spell is usually fast-acting: “It comes
naturally, by virtue of the choreography.” By creating a sacred space and a
sense of solemn ceremony, he says, Council triggers responses rooted in
thousands of years of human culture.

(…)

A Pomo named Edward—37 years old, with a
pompadour and a biker mustache, doing life without parole for a drug-related
murder—gestures for the talking piece. “A lot of us are curious,” he says.
“What are the guidelines? When we take this to the yard, people are going to be
asking, ‘What kind of group is it? What does it consist of? How is it gonna
help me?’ ”

Seide gives a quick overview. Council, he says,
is a “container” for whatever participants need to talk about. Ritual (the
talking piece, the dedications) is key to the vessel’s integrity, setting it
off from ordinary conversation. Each session is led by a facilitator, who
throws out “prompts”—short statements that invite narrative responses. Speakers
are encouraged to tell stories rather than offer ideas or opinions (“You can’t
argue with a story”), and to be spontaneous, emotionally open, and succinct. Listeners
are discouraged from interrupting, criticizing, or judging. If they’re moved by
what’s said, they’re welcome to say “aho” (a Lakota version of “amen,” first
brought to the foundation by visiting tribal elders). Everyone is asked to
maintain confidentiality, unless permission is given—as it was to me—to share
outside the circle.

But Council is like Zen, Seide likes to say:
You can’t understand it by talking about it. The only way to find the answers,
he tells the men, is by “living into the questions.”

To get things rolling, Seide tosses out the
first prompt: Tell
me about your lineage. He names his
grandparents and parents, then passes the talking piece. One by one, the others
do the same—some adding siblings, children and grandchildren, or their ancestral
ethnicities. Mobley claims both Jewish and Plains Indian heritage. Some of the
Indians admit to the presence of Austrians or Africans among their forebears.

Talk about
a time when someone gave you a gift you’re carrying into this circle. Raven, 47, a Pima with a teardrop tattoo
beside his left eye (receiving stolen property, third strike, 25 to life),
speaks of his father-in-law, a Japanese American who taught him how to roof a
house and install an HVAC system. The Honduran, a 34-year-old ex-gangbanger
called Omar (attempted murder, 25 to life), acknowledges his stepfather: “He
told me, ‘Stay away from your homeys, man.’ ” Jeffrey, 60, a diminutive,
balding black man (robbery, 30 to life), names his parents, for “bringing me
the word of the Lord.” Trixie, 46 (robbery, 25 years), whose five o’clock
shadow contrasts strikingly with her cascade of copper hair, names her
daughter: “She gave me hope. She taught me to leave the hurt behind and move
on.”

Over lunch, we’re asked to pair off and tell
each other something few people know about us. Jaguar tells me proudly about a
night at his grandparents’ farm in Jalisco, Mexico, when he helped a distressed
sow give birth by reaching inside her and pulling out a piglet, then did the
same for a struggling cow. I tell him about my grandfather, an immigrant from
Russia, who died in 1931 after being clubbed by a policeman. Jaguar seems as
surprised by my story of urban bloodshed as I am by his tale of rural bliss.

When the circle re-forms, Edward takes a seat
next to Trixie. “I ain’t afraid of you,” he says with a smile. The divisions
that the Council began with seem to be breaking down.

Seide has us do a Council without words, in
which the holder of the talking piece hands it off when he feels “seen,” after
exchanging eye contact with each person in the circle. That’s followed by an
exercise in which we regroup again and again, based on shifting criteria—those
over 50 on one side of the room, under 50 on the other; those born in
California on one side, out-of-staters on the other. When we sit again, the
demographic pie chart has dissolved further.

The talking piece completes more circuits, and
the hours pass. Seide throws out a final prompt: What does the word “legacy” mean to you?

“Someone lost their life at my hands,” says
Edward. “I took my life from my children, my wife, my mother, my father. There
will never be no one to blame but myself.”

There is a long silence. This is the kind of
talk that can get your ass kicked in prison, under normal circumstances—but the
inmates gaze at Edward with expressions of tenderness and sorrow. I’m reminded
of something Seide told me: “It’s really difficult, when you encounter someone
whose story has moved you, to demean or hurt them.… The bell of recognition
cannot be unrung.”

Trixie tells how she was sold into prostitution
as a small child in Tijuana and wound up running with a gang in East L.A.: “My
mom has to carry the pain for her mistakes. She says, ‘I cry because I feel
like it’s my fault you’re in prison.’ ” Trixie chokes back tears. “She’s a
lonely lady.”

Hump, a pensive-looking 28-year-old with short
dreadlocks, talks about his own mother. She became addicted to crack when he
was small, and he and his sisters often went hungry. The gang that controlled
his block in Oakland set him up in the drug trade. When he was 18, and members
of a rival gang snatched his cousin’s gold chain, Hump and his comrades took
revenge by shooting up a New Year’s Eve party. Hump landed a 25-year sentence
for inflicting grievous bodily injury with an automatic weapon.

Hump’s mother, conscience-stricken, quit the
pipe; as he cycled through penitentiaries, she drove long hours to visit him,
sent cards and care packages, reminded him of how they used to snuggle together.
Hump’s gratitude was tinged with a sense of entitlement: He felt she owed him.
Meanwhile, he fell in with a prison-based gang. One day it ordered him to stab
an inmate he’d known since childhood. Hump warned the intended victim, and the
two of them knifed the plotters instead. The (nonlethal) attack earned him 17
months in solitary, after which members of his gang stabbed him in retaliation.
Once he recovered, he was shipped to SVSP.

Up to that point, his story had followed a
depressingly familiar pattern: Poor kid from fractured family joins gang to
survive, which leads to downward spiral of violence, prison, and violence in
prison. In the protected zone of A Yard, however, Hump began rethinking his
life. Soon after his arrival, in 2009, he started studying for his GED. He
signed up for AA and NA, and when Warden Grounds began introducing more
rehabilitation programs, he joined every one he could. He even wrote remorseful
letters to his victims’ families.

But he never heard inmates talk the way they’ve
done today. After listening to Edward and Trixie, it occurs to him that he owes
something to his mom.

“I’ve never asked her to forgive me,” he says.
“I’m gonna make sure to ask tomorrow.”

The Council says, “Aho.”

In Making Good
(2001), an essential text of the restorative justice movement, the Irish
criminologist Shadd Maruna analyzes hundreds of interviews with British
“desisters”—ex-cons who have abandoned crime. What they have in common is
something Maruna calls a “redemption script.” To stay straight, he writes,
“ex-offenders need to make sense of their lives. This sense-making commonly
takes the form of a life story or self-narrative.” Desisters “need to account
for and understand their criminal pasts…and they also need to understand why
they are now ‘not like that anymore.’ ” In the stories they tell, these men and
women start out as victims of circumstance, but they discover ways to seize
control and let their better selves emerge.

On the second morning of Council training, the
inmates begin to take charge of their own stories. At Seide’s request, they’ve
brought objects that have personal meaning to place on the mat in the center of
the circle. A gray-haired black man in a wheelchair, known to everyone as Mr.
Brown (first-degree murder, life without parole), holds up a chess piece: “It’s
a king with a broken head, because I’m in prison. I made a mistake somewhere,
right? And hopefully my game will get better.” Omar waves a small Honduran
flag: “That’s one of the loveliest places I know on Earth.” Jaguar displays an
oversize watch: “Time,” he says, adding that Hump’s decision to ask his mother
for forgiveness inspired him to write a seven-page letter to his brother last
night, with a similar message. “There’s just not enough time in the day for me
to do what I need to do—and that’s to be right within myself and my family.”

Seide leads the assembly in a few more rounds.
He asks them to list themes they’ve picked up from the day’s discussions,
jotting them on a whiteboard. Then he makes what seems to me a serious error:
He forgets what he said yesterday about “living into the questions.” Instead,
he launches into a lecture on the principles of Council. There are five
elements, he says. The first three are the circle, the center, and the
threshold—that is, the opening ritual. The fourth element is the Four
Intentions. The first intention…

This spiel may go over well in Ojai, but for
this audience, it’s poison. The inmates’ eyes grow unfocused; their bodies
slump or sprawl. After reciting the fifth element, Seide asks, “So how do we go
from a theme to what we talk about in Council? We find the Council prompt!” He
goes on for a while, explaining how to tailor a prompt so that it elicits a
story rather than something else.

But when he asks the inmates to come up with
prompts based on the themes they’ve listed, all the suggestions are
off-base—too broad, too imprecise. As Seide tactfully rejects each idea, the
men shout out others (equally unusable) or snippets of anecdotes. For a half hour, the chaos mounts. I begin to
wonder if these men, after all their traumas and deprivations, are capable of
grasping the abstract concepts required to master Council. Seide’s Zen calm
looks like it’s starting to slip.

Finally, Jaguar declares, “I say we stop asking
how we’re going to do it and just see what works for us.”

Seide agrees. He has the men count off by
threes, then assigns each group a theme: healing, loss, family. Over lunch, the
groups huddle in separate corners of the classroom, quietly hashing out their
prompts.

The circle forms again, with Hump facilitating
the first round. Tell
a story about the healing you did when you lost someone close to you.

Raven tells how his brother called from another
prison to say he was dying of cancer. “He started crying on me. I told him,
‘Man up,’ ” he recalls. “I didn’t have a heart then.” Two weeks later, his
sister called to report that the end had come. “She’s crying hysterically.…”
Raven, too, is crying. He stands, apologizes, and stumbles out of the room.

After a respectful silence, more stories
follow. Jeffrey grieves for his baby daughter, shaken to death by a babysitter.
Seide talks about the chasm that opened with his daughter after his divorce,
and his struggle to close it. Mobley describes the death of his best prison
buddy, and the growth of new friendships afterward. Mr. Brown tells of losing
half a dozen family members while incarcerated.

Raven returns. He never cried about his losses
in prison, he says, because “people will pick you apart like piranhas,” and his
pent-up sadness and anger sometimes led him to attack other inmates. This
group, he adds, “is allowing me to let go of some of that.”

Mobley remembers how his parents stood by him
through his decade of imprisonment: “That gave me something to live up to, I
think.” Mr. Brown recalls a conversation with his sister: “I’m trying to
explain to her, ‘Robbie, I don’t even remember killing nobody. I was that
loaded.’ She says, ‘It don’t matter what happened…I’ll always be there for
you.’ ” James, a tall Lakota with a long black braid (possession of a
controlled substance, three years), gestures to the group. “Here’s to my new
family,” he says.

Edward leads the third round. In five words or less, define
yourself as you’ve been shaped by your losses. He kicks it off with his own list: “Enduring. Hardheaded. Unsympathetic
at times. Afraid. Humble.”

The talking piece completes more revolutions.
When it’s time to adjourn, Hump says, “I appreciate all you tough guys letting
your guard down and letting me get to know you. And you getting to know me.”

The Council says, “Aho.”

The next day, during rec period, hundreds of
inmates churn up the dust in A Yard. Under a chilly, cloudless sky, battalions
of black men do calisthenics; platoons of Latinos kick soccer balls; squads of
whites jog or play checkers. On a bench by the fence, a pair of African
Americans with bulging arms sit listening to a Native American with a teardrop
tattoo.

“It’s a circle, and you tell your story,” he
explains, tracing the shape in the dirt with his sneaker. “Not your opinion,
not your thought, but your story. We’ll be meeting every Monday. I’m Raven, by
the way. Thank you, gentlemen.”